All blogs and guides agreed that it was not easy to go from Ruoquiang to Magnai, 350 km away, through a 3.500 m mountain pass, that was closed in winter due to snow, and in summer due to sandstorms. Moreover, as Ruoqiang was an oasis city in the middle of nowhere, but essentially oriented towards the North and the Xinjiang, and Magnai was a mine city, oriented towards the South and the Qinghai, nor people nor goods felt the need to join these to cities.
- Tag Archives ruoqiang
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Sunday, May 21, 2017, Ruoqiang to Mangnai Zhen by minibus… if possible
Rough and ready, Qinghai is classic off-the-beaten-track territory, often as a last frontier feel to it. Traveling here can be both inconvenient and uncomfortable, though China’s rapid development plans have begun to touch the province, with huge railways and new rail lines under construction.
Despite that, Qinghai still delivers a high dose of solitude among middle-of-nowhere high-plateau vistas, Martian-like red mountains and encounters with remote communities of China’s ethnic minorities”
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May 16, 2017: Qiemo-Rouqiang (315 Km) by local bus and a bivouac in the Takla-Makan
There are buses from Qiemo (Cherchen) to Rouquiang (Charkilik) (or, at least, quite a lot of bloggers have done this stretch of route by bus), so I assume that to find a bus full of smoking (and expectorating) people is not big deal. But… in Google Earth there are a lot of photos following the Cherchen River, which means that there should some kind of road there (and probably some tours too).